


Better Than

by addie_cakes



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Brightwell, Dani's pov, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship/Love, Introspection, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, post 1x3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 04:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20960516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addie_cakes/pseuds/addie_cakes
Summary: “Honestly, I don’t know if root beer and lemon-lime go together," Dani says."Well, I’m not sure I go together with anything,” Malcolm replies, tone too chipper for the sudden shift of subject matter, "so what’s a couple of Dum-Dums in the grand scheme of things?”——Dani considers Bright over a mutually beneficial early morning lollipop pilferage.





	Better Than

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to write something quick to introduce myself to the Prodigal Son fandom.

“I’m pretty sure you could just buy these things and make it easier for yourself,” Dani comments dryly, smiling even as Malcolm offers her another (probably pilfered—at this point she's unwilling to ask) lollipop. With a fake, beleaguered sigh, she takes the candy, ducking her head in a semi-bow in thanks. The gesture is as dramatic as she’ll venture, but Malcolm seems to appreciate the attempt.

“Sure, but there’s no _thrill of the chase_ when you just _buy something_,” Malcolm responds. “And it’s not really stealing if you pick them up when they’re free.”

“You get these from a bank?”

“Yep.”

“Then I’m pretty sure they’re for children,” she smirks. “What flavor did I get?” She asks the question mostly to herself, turning around the sucker to see little cartoon lemons and limes dotting the wrapper. “Huh.”

With a slight nod, Malcolm says, “It’s what you got before, I figured that we’d just keep up the trend. I get root beer, you get lemon-lime, Dr. Tanaka gets cherry. It’s systematic, I think it works.”

Malcolm’s words are quicker than Dani’s mind today. All she’s had is a small cup of burnt coffee, courtesy of JT, and now this sucker—her mental facilities are still sharp, but they're not superhuman, and they're not immune to weakening from the effects of early morning bad food choices. Malcolm, however, can go for days without sleep or food and be as chipper as always, if not a little irritable on the particularly bad days with the recurring nightmares Dani hasn’t yet summoned the courage to inquire about. But even when Malcolm’s well-rested and Gil or Ainsley get a meal in him, Malcolm still isn’t a quiet person. He can still talk for four minutes straight without pausing to take a breath, can still articulate cogent thoughts for just as long, too, which Dani quietly thinks is incredible.

Today, though—today looks to be a good day. Malcolm seems to be his normal degree of tired—which is to say, exhausted but not manic, but he seems as if he’s been on a regular meal schedule for at least a week, which is an uptick from his usual “handful of Cheez-its and a load of some unnamed pills and substances to accompany his morning chamomile” dietary decision.

“You know these things aren’t actually good, right?” Dani asks. She twirls the sucker’s stem around in her fingers; Malcolm’s gaze is trained on her hand, and while she might have once been put-off by his tendency to hyper-focus, she now finds it endearing. “They’re for kids, they're not supposed to taste good.”

“Fine, I’ll take it back, eat both of them together,” Malcolm says easily. He reaches for her hand, and she raises an eyebrow. “I mean, you give a person a gift, they don’t want it, who am I to push the issue?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want it. Now I do want it.” And she does. “Maybe I just don’t have good taste in things and was pointing it out for you.”

Malcolm’s lip upturns in a smirk. “Okay, then I would be helping you by removing the tasteless object from your peripheral.”

Dani returns the expression, turning away from him. “Uh-huh, but I don’t think you should eat two suckers at the same time.”

“Why not?”

It wasn’t necessarily the deepest question, but it wasn’t a bad one, either. Dani gives a half-hearted lift to one of her shoulders, an almost-shrug.

“Honestly, I don’t know if root beer and lemon-lime go together. Might ruin your taste for root beer suckers forever. And if you already like them so much, shouldn’t you _not_ do the thing that’s going to make you dislike them?” Dani says, eyeing her sucker warily, then eyes Malcolm the same way, specifically keeping the candy away from his reach so he can't grab it. It’s an illusory effort, if she’s being honest; he’s taller, and for all his slenderness, he’s not weak. She would definitely be able to get a couple good shots in, but he’s tenacious, and the end-result of who would end up with possession of the sucker would ultimately be a toss-up.

“Well, I’m not sure I go together with anything,” Malcolm replies, tone too chipper for the sudden shift of subject matter, so what’s a couple of Dum-Dums in the grand scheme of things?”

Dani examines the sucker again. She doesn’t even like lemon-lime; it’s a little too tart for her liking and Malcolm probably knows that, if she knows him. She doesn't know why she's making a big deal of things, why she doesn't just hand him the sucker or let him take it so he thinks he's won.

The word she was looking for, to describe the taste of this lollipop, was artificial. It always tastes as if it were made in a lab, just one of a billion other copies, all with the same sugary genetic code, that’s been dropped unceremoniously down an assembly line, where a robot arm tends to it by wrapping it in waxy paper before dropping it into a cold, metal bucket. After that, the brother-suckers get grouped together randomly, no care given to whether or not the chosen number of lollipops actually complement each other, flavor-wise or even otherwise, stuffed into an airtight plastic bag that someone will improperly discard so that it’ll just end up in a landfill someday, and are left there.

They’re left there, and they don’t have any purpose except to be eaten and to end up on an orthodontist’s “What Not to Eat with Braces.”

There's no reason to get so bent out of shape about suckers.

As if able to sense her running thoughts, Malcolm pulls his own sucker from his mouth with a childish _pop_, and Dani has half a mind to take it from him, or at least to roll her eyes at his antics. She does neither; instead, she just watches him as carefully as she always has.

“Maybe you’re pulling too many all-nighters, too, Detective Powell,” he says. The smile that follows is what Dani has come to consider Malcolm’s signature smile—friendly enough to not be creepy, and with a well-intentioned attempt at genuineness, but lacking, altogether, in a sort of smile that reaches his eyes.

He has a warm smile and warm eyes, but he doesn’t have both. They’re both good—maybe wonderful, on their own. His smile is nice; he knows he’s handsome, he knows how to seem inviting and eager and hopeful. He's a rich kid who's used to being rich, who's used to only having to flash a cute, precocious smile to get something thrown his way. The rest of his life—total hell. But the part about having money—there isn't any denying it.

But Malcolm's eyes—they're even worse than his smile because the smile's mostly for show. But his eyes—they’re maybe too earnest-looking for their own good. Large and always swimming with some underlying emotion that Dani once perceived to be sadness but is more certain that it’s a longing for something that he might not even know about yet. Or a longing for something he’s forgotten, something that’s been ripped away from him. She isn’t sure, isn’t even sure if he’s sure, but it’s an ever-present look.

But in spite of all that, his eyes have retained some warmth. A warmth that maybe shouldn’t be there, like a fire should have been stomped out years ago, with everything Malcolm’s been through, and yet—and yet he’s trying. He’s trying to be better, trying to take care of himself, trying to be kind. He’s cold, and sometimes Dani thinks he’s growing colder (what, with the resurgence of copycat killers and constant references of the man who nearly killed him—or so Malcolm says. Everyone else says he’s lying or making hyperboles about Martin Whitly. Dani’s inclined to believe him over a serial killer, a controlling former debutante, and a well-meaning but overprotective cop who'd rather not see Malcolm get sucked into his father's life again), but he’s doing everything in his power to stay warm.

So his smile is nice, and his eyes are nice, but the two features of his face always seem to be in competition with each other, like there can’t possibly be two mutually good things in Malcolm Bright without being in constant competition with each other.

Kind of like root beer and lemon-lime.

“You know,” she begins, ignoring his casual comment about his insomnia, “for what it’s worth, root beer and lemon-lime are…I mean, if you think about it, they’re both types of soda, kind of, so—”

“—so categorically they belong together,” Malcolm finishes blankly. He blinks, as if recognizing what he’s said, and Dani isn’t sure that there’s some bigger consequence of his words that she isn’t catching, that Malcolm at least doesn’t think she notices.

There’s no reason why Malcolm should be halfway to freaking out about lollipops and friendship, and Dani doesn’t quite know what to do with that new look of panic in his eyes. It’s different than when he woke up from that bad nightmare, or the time when he was drifting into fevered unconsciousness from an impromptu snake bite (it occurs to the young woman that she’s learned so much, maybe too much, about Malcolm in such a short amount of time)—those times, he wasn’t in control of himself. But now he can’t hide behind incoherence and unintelligibility—all he has is a few inches between himself and Dani, and he's in complete control of his body, and they’re both looking at each other, at least until Malcolm glances back down at his sucker.

He clears his throat. “…sorry. I wouldn’t want to put you in that boat.”

“Why, is it a sinking ship?” she asks bluntly.

Yes, maybe Malcolm’s a mess; he doesn’t sleep, he’s been losing weight because he doesn’t sleep and he works out too much and he doesn’t like eating because eating makes people tired, and if he’s tired he won’t work out, and if he doesn’t work out, then he won’t wake himself up, and if he doesn't wake himself up, that means he's asleep, and if he goes to sleep—she’s actually not entirely sure what happens _when_ he goes to sleep, but he dreams, and he dreams badly and he wakes up in these violent frights.

Maybe Malcolm’s a mess. And maybe it scares him to think that there’s someone out there—maybe a lot of people, for that matter—who isn’t afraid of Malcolm, or who he is, or how he wants to hurt himself all the time because he doesn't know what to do with himself if he's not feeling anything.

That if he puts someone into the same _category _as him, then he’s automatically doomed them to the same sort of awful life that he’s suffered through, because there couldn't _possibly _be someone as fractured as he is.

If she were in the mood for spitballing, she’d say those things.

Malcolm hesitates. He gives a small shake of his head, and Dani suddenly feels guilty. She doesn’t mean it, she doesn’t think that he’s a lost cause. In fact, she knows how much Malcolm wants to be okay.

Maybe not great.

Maybe not even good.

But overall, okay.

She reaches over, patting his arm with a few firm, awkward pats. “Look. It’s a sucker.” She holds hers up and gestures to it weakly. “Maybe on the outside, two flavors look like they’d never go together. But there’s this wrapper on the outside that hides what the sucker really is to everyone else. And then you unwrap them, and—and you’re right. Root beer and lemon-lime don’t go together. Unless you try that thing where you mix Coke and lemonade together—”

“I think it’s called Spezi,” Malcolm nods seriously.

“Sure,” Dani agrees quickly, not bothering to wonder if he’s actually right or is merely repeating something he read once that’s vaguely right and barely related. “Okay, and sometimes you think you’re getting lemon-lime because the wrapper says you’re getting lemon-lime, and you're worried because lemon-lime and root beer don't go together, but you open it, and you realize that someone wrapped it wrong, so now you have lemon-lime. You have two lemon-limes.” Her analogy is falling flat, coming apart; it really doesn’t make sense, but Malcolm’s staying silent to let her try to bring it together, at least for the end.

“What I’m trying to say is," she continues, huffing, "maybe someone thinks they’re root beer, and they’re never going to go with anything else. Not cotton candy, not strawberry—but, maybe they never were root beer, everyone just _saw_ root beer on the wrapper and let that person think they were root beer without even checking. So when a lemon-lime sucker comes around and—and actually thinks to rip off the wrapper of the root beer, they find out that the root beer wasn’t ever root beer. It was lemon-lime, too. And they were never as different as everyone let them think they were.”

Trailing off lamely, Dani turns her gaze to the ground. She doesn’t talk this much, ever—in fact, corny conversations like these strictly make her uncomfortable. But there’s something about Malcolm, something about him that makes him seem so uncertain, even though he’s the type of person to know just about everything he can, to run headlong into danger even when everyone's telling him that he's not qualified to do that sort of thing, that compels Dani to want him to believe that the world isn’t as, in his words, categorical, as he thinks it is.

And maybe she doesn't want him to think that the world's so open that he can ignore orders and helpful suggestions and run after the guy with the gun or the snake or the hostage, but for the most part, she doesn't want him to be afraid. Malcolm Bright isn't the kind of person who should be afraid.

And Dani's not the best at comforting people, but she’s an easy ear to talk to, and sometimes, given a rough enough morning, good for one food-analogous pep talk.

Malcolm’s quiet for a few moments more before he clears his throat. “But just so we’re clear on this, I was the root beer in your story?”

“I didn’t say the root beer was anyone we knew—”

“—my root beer lollipop _was_ actually root beer, for the record—”

“—awesome.” Dani pulls the wrapper off her sucker quickly, tearing her gaze away from Malcolm to glance down. “…huh.”

She expects to see a cloudy light yellow sucker, like a normal lemon-lime sucker would be. But instead, all she sees is a glassy amber orb sitting atop the sucker’s paper stem.

Malcolm peers over her shoulder, and Dani can feel him smiling behind her. “…okay, now make my insomnia go away,” he says suddenly.

Dani does a double-take, whipping her head around to look at the man. He doesn’t look sincere, which is, for once, a remarkably good thing. Instead, he’s still smiling. “What?” she asks.

Malcolm hums thoughtfully and shrugs his shoulders up and down. “I don’t know, you made your lollipop analogy come to life. I know root beer lollipops, and that’s root beer. Definitely not lemon-lime. I assume that you either have x-ray vision now, or you’re a prophet, so you might be able to get God to do things for you in exchange for using your body as a mouthpiece.” He taps his finger thoughtfully against his chin. “Now, if _you_ were the one who thought you were a prophet, we might have to consider whether or not you had a psychotic break.”

Her lips settle into a thin, unimpressed line. So much for sweet, helpful stories to help a guy through crippling insecurity. “And if you thought I was a prophet, but I’m actually not?”

Malcom’s eyebrows raise, his interest piqued. “Then _I’ve_ had the psychotic break. And that’s—" he grimaces. "—that's another problem for tomorrow’s us. Right, detective?”

“…” She huffs out a small laugh, popping the sucker into her mouth. It really is root beer, sugary sweet and still artificial. But it isn’t so tart like lemon-lime, and Dani thinks that it’s good to get a change of pace every now and again, even when it’s unexpected. Or in this case, perhaps prophetical.

Maybe they are more alike than they think—maybe Malcolm was never a lemon-lime at all, and Dani was the one who was the root beer. That, she thinks, would certainly be a surprise for all. And for that matter, Dani hasn’t really been sleeping as well as usual, and she’s starting to understand even to a small degree what it’s like to be constantly tired, and she wonders how Malcolm’s ever managed it like he has. And maybe it’s all, as Malcolm would hypothesize, some sort of placebo-like brain activity that makes Dani think that Malcolm’s the reason she’s losing sleep. Maybe it’s just her, because it couldn’t be all about him. Because if it were—

Dani nods, breaking herself out of her reverie, beginning to walk toward the office, while Malcolm only needs to take a few quick steps to catch up. She sniffs, straightening her back out in a vain attempt to pop it before she once again relegates herself to a few more hours of desk work. “God help tomorrow’s us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, this show is my latest obsession. Please feel free to talk to me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/addie_cakes_) or [Tumblr](https://addie-cakes.tumblr.com) I'd love to make new friends!


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